Tux Training

Ubuntu Jaunty introduced the new annoying notification system, and by default made pidgin hook into it.  So every non-focused IM you get appears in the upper right hand corner of the screen, completely missing the point of being minimized.

This “annoyance” can be easily fixed by disabling the libnotify plugin within the Pidgin plugins manager. To disable this system go to Tools > Plugins and untick the checkbox next to “Libnotify Popups”.

Also, if you’d prefer, you can try to customize the pop-up behavior by selecting the “Configure Plugin” button.

On 2 previous mutt setups (ubuntu and arch), mutt behaved pretty much like I told it to .  I carry my *rc files with me from install to install, so nothing changed.  But in Opensuse 11.1, on mutt, when you compose a message, it skips the “To:” inquiry that allows you to select from your aliases and goes straight into vim or whatever you have set as your editor.

This is a simple fix.  Simply add the following in your ~/.muttrc file:

set autoedit=no

Bitlbee is a “console-based IRC to IM chatting gateway, including ICQ/MSN/Jabber”. Basically, it allows the user to interact with popular chat networks (ICQ, MSN, Jabber, AIM, YIM) within their IRC client.

The users’ buddies appear as normal IRC users in a channel and conversations use the private message facility of IRC.

Continue reading ‘Chat with AIM, MSN, Gtalk, and Yahoo through Irssi with bitlbee’ »

Below will show have to use a simple script that will fetch the total number of unread emails in your gmail account and display that in screen using backticks.

Continue reading ‘Show Unread Gmails in Gnu Screen Status Bar’ »

In many instances you will notice, over IMAP, that Mutt may just close your mailbox.

There is probably a firewall or NAT router between you and your server which drops connections that don’t get traffic frequently enough. Mutt by default will send keepalive traffic every 15 minutes, which is well within the IMAP specification (servers are required to hold connections open for 30 minutes).

Unfortunately some routers will drop you after as little as one minute. You can try adjusting $timeout (reducing this polls the current mailbox more often), $mail_check (this controls how frequently other mailboxes are polled), or $imap_keepalive (which controls how often keepalive messages are sent in non-interactive contexts, eg while composing email messages). Lower these until your router stops disconnecting you, but don’t make them so low that mutt starts to feel sluggish.

In my .muttrc file i have the following listed:

set imap_keepalive=300
set timeout=300

Mutt lets you efficiently search inside messages using regular expressions and patterns. You can search both message headers and bodies for fragments matching a particular query string, and even automatically tag all matching messages for action. To do this, use the T command, followed by an appropriate selector. For example, the command T ~B techfinds and tags all messages containing the string “tech”.

Continue reading ‘Search, Filter, and Tag messages in Mutt’ »

Mutt lets you define certain mailboxes as “active”—that is, mailboxes which are likely to receive new mail on an ongoing basis. When any of these active mailboxes receives a new message, Mutt will alert you with a status bar notification. To use this feature, list the mailboxes to be monitored with the mailboxes command, as follows:

mailboxes “=inbox”
mailboxes “=lists/php”

You can set, how often mutt shall check for new mails with:

set timeout=10 # mutt ‘presses’ (like) a key for you (while you’re idle)
# each x sec to trigger the thing below
set mail_check=5 # mutt checks for new mails on every keystroke
# but not more often then once in 5 seconds
set beep_new # beep on new messages in the mailboxes

If you subscribe to mailing lists, you’ll be pleased to know about Mutt’s threading features. Mutt automatically sorts messages by topic, so that messages with the same topic end up organized sequentially. You can then use the cursor keys to navigate between messages in the same thread, allowing you to quickly view all the replies to a particular message. To use this feature, place the following in your ~/.muttrc file.

set sort=threads

Note: In threaded mode, a number of additional functions become available: you can delete all messages in a thread, collapse or expand a thread, mark a thread as read or unread, and jump to the start or end of a thread. See the Mutt manual for information on the keystrokes to access these functions.

Mutt lets you colorize almost any aspect of a message, making it easier to visually distinguish between, for example, a reply and text quoted from an earlier message. It’s also possible to find and highlight regular expressions in either the body or headers of an e-mail message, and display them in different colors—for example, e-mail addresses in yellow and URLs in green. To do this, issue the color command with appropriate parameters, as in the examples below:

#Different colors for different levels of quoting.
## Syntax
# color WHERE FOREGROUND BACKGROUND REGEXP
color hdrdefault white black # headers white on black
color header brightgreen black ^From: # sender’s name in green
color header brightgreen black ^To:
color quoted magenta black
color quoted1 blue black
color quoted2 red black
color quoted3 yellow black
color quoted4 cyan black
color quoted5 blue black
color quoted6 magenta black
color quoted7 red black
color quoted8 yellow black
color quoted9 cyan black
color signature red black  #signature in red